Colby students volunteer to work at marine museum

SEARSPORT — Colby College’s Jan-Plan program provided 13 volunteer students who worked in January as interns at the Penobscot Marine Museum.

The program is a between-semesters project for which students propose work and carry out plans. Student interests ranged from medicine to art history. Despite the fact that none had previously thought of working in a museum as a career, some say they have developed interests in museum work.

Cataloguing photographs and papers, researching probate records, exploring 19th century medicine and other research was done by the students.

Subjects were anything from Chinese port paintings to the Penobscot Bay fisheries.

Museum director Renny Stackpole said that the experience had been wonderful for the students and museum.

Sam Shogren, museum curator, set up and monitored the project.